Taxonomic diversity of marine animals decreased markedly during the end-Guadalupian and end-Permian mass extinctions, but conodonts were largely unaffected by these two major events. This conclusion is largely based on potentially problematic conodont taxonomy, but quantitative analyses of conodont morphology have received little attention, despite offering key insights into macroevolutionary dynamics. Polygnathacea conodonts seemingly evolved fast and had high morphological diversity, and are therefore ideal for exploring morphospace trends and disparity related to environmental change in conodonts. Here we compiled discrete character-taxon matrices to first refine phylogenetic interpretations and then explore morphological disparity in four related conodont families, the Anchignathodontidae, Sweetognathidae, Idiognathodontidae and Vjalovognathidae, from the Permian to Early Triassic. Our findings reveal morphological innovation and exploration of new morphospace after the end-Guadalupian mass extinction and end-Permian mass extinction. We also show that the smaller end-Guadalupian extinction event was more impactful, resulting in greater losses of morphological disparity and taxonomic diversity, than the larger end-Permian extinction event. Overall, our study reveals morphological disparity trends related to temporal evolutionary dynamics for conodonts during the geologically and environmentally turbulent Permian and Early Triassic. We show that conodonts are affected by extinction events during this interval in terms of morphological diversity, rather than simply taxonomic diversity.

中文翻译：

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基于多颌科的二叠纪和早三叠世牙形刺在大规模灭绝事件后的形态创新

在瓜达卢普纪末期和二叠纪末期大规模灭绝期间，海洋动物的分类多样性显着下降，但牙形刺基本上未受到这两次重大事件的影响。这一结论主要基于可能存在问题的牙形刺分类学，但牙形刺形态的定量分析尽管提供了宏观进化动力学的重要见解，但很少受到关注。多颌科牙形刺似乎进化得很快，具有很高的形态多样性，因此非常适合探索牙形刺与环境变化相关的形态空间趋势和差异。在这里，我们编制了离散的特征分类矩阵，首先完善系统发育解释，然后探索从二叠纪到早三叠世四个相关牙形刺科（Anchignathontidae、Sweetognathidae、Idiognathodontidae 和 Vjalovognathidae）的形态差异。我们的研究结果揭示了瓜达鲁普纪末和二叠纪末大规模灭绝后的形态创新和新形态空间的探索。我们还表明，较小的瓜达卢普世末灭绝事件比较大的二叠纪末灭绝事件影响更大，导致形态差异和分类多样性损失更大。总体而言，我们的研究揭示了在地质和环境动荡的二叠纪和早三叠世期间与牙形刺时间演化动态相关的形态差异趋势。我们表明，在此期间，牙形刺在形态多样性方面受到灭绝事件的影响，而不仅仅是分类多样性。